V. I. Lenin

On the Tenth Anniversary ofPravda

Written:2 May 1922First Published:Pravda No. 98.May 5, 1922; Signed: N. Lenin; Publishedaccordingto the Pravda textSource:Lenin’sCollected Works, 2nd English Edition, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1965,Volume 33, pages 349-352Translated:David Skvirsky and George HannaTranscription\HTML Markup:David Walters&R. CymbalaCopyleft:V. I. Lenin Internet Archive (www.marx.org) 2002. Permission is granted to copy and/or distribute this document under the terms of theGNU Free Documentation License

It is ten years sincePravda,the legal—legal
    even undertsaristlaw—Bolshevik daily paper, was
    founded. This decade was preceded by, approximately, another decade: nine
    years (1903-12) since the emergence of Bolshevism, or thirteen years
    (1900-12), if we count from the founding in 1900 of the
    “Bolshevik-oriented” oldIskra.[1]

The tenth anniversary of a Bolshevik daily published in Russia .... Only
    ten years have elapsed! But measured in terms of our struggle and movement
    they are equal to a hundred years. For the pace of social development in the
    past five years has been positively staggering if we apply the old yardstick
    of European philistines like the heroes of the Second and Two-and-a-Half
    Internationals. These civilised philistines are accustomed to regard as
    “natural” a situation in which hundreds of millions of people
    (over a thousand million, to be exact) in the colonies and in semi-dependent
    and poor countries tolerate the treatment meted out to Indians or Chinese,
    tolerate incredible exploitation, and outright depredation, and hunger, and
    violence, and humiliation, all in order that “civilised” men
    might “freely”, “democratically”, according to
    “parliamentary procedure”, decide whether the booty should be
    divided up peacefully, or whether ten million or so must be done to death in
    this division of the imperialist booty, yesterday between Germany and
    Britain, tomorrow between Japan and the U.S.A. (with France and Britain
    participating in one form or another).

The basic reason for this tremendous acceleration of world development is
    that new hundreds of millions of people have been drawn into it. The old
    bourgeois and imperialist Europe, which was accustomed to look upon itself
    as the centre of the universe, rotted and burst like a putrid ulcer in the
    first imperialist holocaust. No matter bow the Spenglers and all the
    enlightened philistines, who are capable of admiring (or even studying)
    Spengler, may lament it, this decline of the old Europe is but an episode in
    the history of the downfall of the world bourgeoisie, oversatiated by
    imperialist rapine and the oppression of the majority of the world’s
    population.

That majority has now awakened and has begun a movement which even the
    “mightiest” powers cannot stem. They stand no chance. For the
    present “victors” in the first imperialist slaughter have not
    the strength to defeat smalltiny, I might say—Ireland, nor can they
    emerge victoriotis from the confusion in currency and finance issues that
    reigns in their own midst. Meanwhile, India and China are seething. They
    represent over 700 million people, and together with the neighbouring Asian
    countries, that are in all ways similar to them, over half of the
    world’s inhabitants. Inexorably and with mounting momentum they are
    approaching their 1905, with the essential and important difference that in
    1905 the revolution in Russia could still proceed (at any rate at the
    beginning) in isolation, that is, without other countries being immediately
    drawn in. But the revolutions that are maturing in India and China are being
    drawn into—have already been drawn into—the revolutionary
    struggle, the revolutionary movement, the world revolution.

The tenth anniversary ofPravda,the legal Bolshevik daily, is a
    clearly defined marker of this great acceleration of the greatest world
    revolution. In 1906-07, it seemed that the tsarist government had completely
    crushed the revolution. A few years later the Bolshevik Party was
    able—in a different form, by a different method—to
    penetrate into the very citadel of the enemy and daily,
    “legally”, proceed with its work of undermining the accursed
    tsarist and landowner autocracy from within. A few more years passed, and
    the proletarian revolution, organised by Bolshevism, triumphed.

Some ten or so revolutionaries shared in the founding of the oldIskrain 1900, and only about forty attended the birth of
      Bolshevism at the illegal congresses in Brussels and London in 1903.[2]

In 1912-13, when the legal BolshevikPravdacame into being it
    had the support of hundreds of thousands of workers, who by their modest
    contributions[3]were able to overcome both the oppression of
    tsarism and the competition of the Mensheviks, those petty-bourgeois
    traitors to socialism.

In November 1917, nine million electors out of a total of thirty-six
    million voted for the Bolsheviks in the elections 10 the Constituent
    Assembly. But if we take the actual struggle, and not merely the elections,
    at the close of October and in November 1917, the Bolsheviks had the support
    of themajorityof the proletariat and class-conscious peasantry,
    as represented by the majority of the delegates at the Second All-Russia
    Congress of Soviets, and by the majority of the most active and politically
    conscious section of the working people, namely, the twelve-million-strong
    army of that day.

These few figures illustrating the “acceleration” of the
    world revolutionary movement in the past twenty years give a very small and
    very incomplete picture. They afford only a very approximate idea of the
    history of no more than 150 million people, whereas in these twenty years
    the revolution has developed into an invincible force in countries with a
    total population of over a thousand million (the whole of Asia, not to
    forget South Africa, which recently reminded the world of its claim tohumanand not slavish existence, and by methods which were not
    altogether “parliamentary”).

Some infant Spenglers—I apologise for the expressionmay conclude
    (every variety of nonsense can he expected from the “clever”
    leaders of the Second and Two-and-aHalf Internationals) that this estimate
    of the revolutionary forces fails to take into account the European and
    American proletariat. These “clever” leaders always argue as if
    the fact that birth comes nine months after conception necessarily means
    that the exact hour and minute of birth can be defined beforehand, also the
    position of the infant during delivery, the condition of the mother and the
    exact degree of pain and danger both will suffer. Very “clever”!
    These

    gentry cannot for the life of them understand that from the point of
    view of the development of the international revolution the transition from
    Chartism to Henderson’s servility to the bourgeoisie, or the
    transition from Varlin to Renaudel, from Wilhelm Liebknecht and Bebel to
    Sudekum, Scheidemanu and Noske, can only be likened to an automobile passingfroma smooth highway stretching for hundreds of milestoa dirty stinking puddle of a few yards in length on that highway.

Men are the makers of history. But the Chartists, the Varlins and the
    Liebknechts applied their minds and hearts to it. The leaders of the Second
    and Two-and-a-Half Internationals apply other parts of the anatomy: they
    fertilise the ground for the appearance of new Chartists, new Varlins and
    new Liebknechts.

At thismost difficultmoment it would be most harmful for
    revolutionaries to indulge in self-deception. Though Bolshevism hasbecomean international force, though in all the civilised and
    advanced countries new Chartists, new Varlins, new Liebknechts have been
    born, and are growing up as legal (just as legal as ourPravdawas
    under the tsars ten years ago) Communist Parties, nonetheless, for the time
    being, the international bourgeoisie still remains incomparably stronger
    than its class enemy. This bourgeoisie, which has done everything in its
    power to hamper the birth of proletarian power in Russia and to multiply
    tenfold the dangers and suffering attending its birth, is still in a
    position to condemn millions and tens of millions to torment and death
    through its whiteguard and imperialist wars, etc. That is somethingwemust not forget. And we must skilfully adapt our tactics to this
    specific situation. The bourgeoisie is still able freely to torment, torture
    and kill. But it cannot halt the inevitable and—from the standpoint of
    world history—not far distant triumph of the revolutionary
    proletariat.

May 2, 1922

[1]Iskra(old) was the first Russian illegal Marxist
      newspaper. Founded by Lenin in 1900, it played the decisive role in the
      formation of a revolutionary Marxist party of the working class of
      Russia. Soon after the Second Party Congress (1903), control of the
      newspaper was seized by Mensheviks. With the publication of its 52nd issueIskraceased to be an organ of revolutionary Marxism.

[2]Lenin
    refers to the Second Congress of the R.S.D.L.P., which was held on July
    17-August 10 (July 30-August 23), 1903. The first thirteen sessions took
    place in Brussels. Owing to police persecution, the Congress was moved to
    London.

[3]Here Lenin
    means the cash collections that were undertaken by workers for their
    newspaperPravda.